Former Miss Bum Bum runner-up back in hospital for infected botched butt implant

Andressa Urach (L) and a friend in the hospital following her surgery.
(Instagram)

Brazilian beauty queen and television host Andressa Urach is back in the hospital following another infection in her butt implants.

The 27-year-old beauty and former contestant in the South American country’s infamous Miss Bum Bum contest was rushed to the hospital after presenting symptoms related to her recently added implants in her buttocks. Speaking to reporters from her hospital bed in São Paulo, Urach said that she underwent an emergency operation to remove the substances from her left butt cheek, as her leg was at risk.

The runner-up in the popular Miss BumBum competition in 2012 was taken to the hospital earlier this week after waking up with a huge inflammation.

"I am suffering a lot, but God is with me. It's my fault, my vanity made me push the limits," Urach said, according to the Daily Mail. "Thanks to God I no longer need my body to work, now I work with honor and can sustain my family like that. I prefer to have legs and be able to walk and lose half a buttock than to die."

Last year Urach was hospitalized for over a month in serious condition after a cosmetic treatment to increase the size of her thighs, medical sources reported.

A spokesman for the model said that doctors performed a "cleaning" procedure at the site on her leg where on Nov. 21 she underwent an operation to remove a product called hydrogel, which she had had injected five years ago to increase the size of her upper legs.

Since Urach's ordeal, several Brazilian celebrities have come forward to disclose that similar procedures had sent them to the hospital. In October, a 39-year-old woman died from a pulmonary embolism hours after hydrogel was injected in her buttocks in the city of Goiana.

Experts and activists worry that Brazil's culture of beauty has numbed women to the dangers and encouraged them to experiment with riskier, untested materials and methods, and even unlicensed practitioners.

"They are selling us these plastic surgeries, these synthetic injections, like it was any other product," said Sara Winter, a women's rights activist who protested on Copacabana beach in December with a large needle made of cardboard and signs sending good wishes for Urach's recovery.

Brazil recently surpassed the United States in plastic surgeries, with 1.5 million procedures in 2013, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

One of Urach's closest friends, Jessica Lopes, a reality TV star she met in the Miss BumBum contest, told the celebrity news site EGO that the two used to schedule visits to the plastic surgeon together as if it were "a trip to the mall."

Urach, who once claimed to have slept with soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, has reportedly undergone at least nine cosmetic procedures in the past five years, which includes a nose job, a bioplasty facial 'correction', jaw reduction, breast enlargement, liposuction and even vaginal lip reduction.